


Intermission

by cafephan



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Post-breakup, So many metaphors they may hurt your brain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-15
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-30 17:00:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3944557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafephan/pseuds/cafephan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which their relationship is a play, and the lights are out during intermission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Intermission

No cliché was fitting.

No metaphor was ever so extensive.

No personification could do his emotions justice.

It was like a spotlight, once at its brightest peak, now a dimmer, sympathetic glow, simmered out like its focal.

Seven years of fluffy perfection, barely even an overcast glossing over the idealistic relationship. All broken down, in a matter of weeks. The curtains opened up the scene, the spotlight shone, and the crowd below were shown a lie. The crowd, Dan mused, was primarily himself, right in this moment, reflecting on the events of late.

It started with the little things, the cereal thefts becoming less tolerable, the dispute of what takeaway to order leading to arguments about rent, it seemed as if they couldn’t help but cause a fight, the same old drama every night.

With the same sorry conclusion.

Laid alone below the monochrome bedsheets, feeling the ghost of where Phil’s legs used to be tangled with his own, the spacious mattress anything but desirable. The ghost of where Phil’s lips used to be, pressed lovingly against Dan’s, unforgivably cold air nipping at the plump pink flesh now that kisses were a distant memory, for which Dan internally begged for an encore. If he listened hard enough, and laid just still enough, he would sometimes hear Phil’s mutterings from the room adjacent, and he would wonder if he felt the same, missed him too.

But every night Dan would storm into his room after yet another screaming match, storming offstage, the whole thing being more than he could take.

His whole life was ashambles, a bitter reminder of what could have been. Giving up a potential career in acting lead to his life being a much too real performance, the genre as yet undetermined. It almost didn’t comprehend being a metaphor when the conceit was all too realistic.

He just needed a break. An intermission, if you will.

It was when Dan had stated they needed to talk, and they were sat across from each other, that the lights came back up, and the spotlight intensified. Dan could never truly feel anything but passion for Phil, and this was something he knew was bittersweet. The man he fell in love with, Dan would argue at that point a boy, was not the man he saw before him now.

How had they managed to fall off track?

Phil had sat cross-legged, listening intently and nodding when necessary, up to the point of no return.

He had stormed out of the flat, flustered and holding back a bay of erratic emotion, screaming a final string of regrets before the flat shook with the force of the door slam.

The chemistry just wasn’t there, he tried to tell himself, it wasn’t his paranoid mind, but Dan couldn’t act like he didn’t care because he did. Still does.

They couldn’t live the scene forever, they were better off apart. But when intermission was due to arrive, and the lights didn’t come up, the events replayed in a flurry of sorrow and panic.

It was how Dan coped now, writing down the poetic babbles that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else. His thoughts could be construed as existential, unstable even, but they were crystal clear, just solely focused. Focused on the man that had now been gone for two months, two months which the curtains had yet to close on.

_I’ll still love you when the lights come up, for our intermission_

The looped handwriting was stuck up on Phil’s mirror on the first night, when hope was still burning in the chocolate eyes which had yet to be blinded by the light of realisation.

_I couldn’t act like I didn’t care, when I do. I do._

The second night was when things hit close to home, and Dan stayed just a little bit longer in front of Phil’s mirror, after sticking the second post-it beside the first. No communication, the unlit scene with Dan onstage alone.

He couldn’t play the part anymore.

He didn’t even try to move on, rejected everyone immediately who showed even a shed of interest – I’ve got a boyfriend at home. It’s what he told himself as he ascended the staircase every night, only to be met with hollow walls and vacant spaces.

_We’re like actors in a play, living out our love on stage_

_Were you just saying the same old lines to me?_

Dan pressed his lips into a fine line as the post-it stuck lazily to the pad of his thumb as he attempted to find a space on the mirror. Night twenty of the solo performance, the intermission still unlit and the velvet curtains tied firmly to the side.

The mirror was next to gone, only a bulletin board of Dan’s handwriting and his stupid semantic metaphors that were not only illogical but just plain cryptic to anyone else.

“What do you mean have I ever been to the theatre with an unlit intermission? That’s stupid you would hurt yourself trying to move” Louise’s critique was Dan’s final inclination.

Present day, the spotlight now a burned out spark in a once unworldly scene. Unexpected kisses, impromptu affection in the most unlikely situation, nights of extraordinary passion with ‘I love you’ breathed under a heartbeat.

The streets were cold and brutally unforgiving, teenagers glaring and the elderly intentionally crossing the street to avoid the brunet with drooping bags beneath the eyes and the permanently etched frown. The folded paper bounced inside Dan’s fist, each echoed step on the pavement a new emotion adding to the mix.

It was next to no time that Dan stood outside Phil’s new residence, shaking and legs threatening to give way with every passing second.

An opaque figure remained behind the curtains of red, when Dan gained a burst of confidence and his legs carried him to the front door, and his limbs worked collaboratively for him to knock gently.

The figure slowly retreated from the curtains, and Dan heard the faint footsteps from inside the house, gradually increasing in volume. The lamplight accentuated the now vacant room upstairs where the figure stood moments ago.

The door creaked open, the thick glasses lens peeking out a second before Phil himself, expression unreadable but stance shy. The lamplight bounced from his smooth skin, the light behind from his home almost causing a golden glow.

“Dan? What are you doing here? I thought you-“

“I was wrong” he interjected, proceeded by a list of reasons why, alluding subtly to the metaphor that had since become his life, and Phil bit his lip.

“I really wish you would’ve called me first…” he trailed off as his gaze turned to the ceiling, and Dan’s turned upwards too, to debunk the noise which had interrupted Phil.

An opaque figure darted in and out of Dan’s view of the window, and Phil’s name was shouted from upstairs. Only seconds later a topless guy appeared behind Phil and wrapped his arms around his waist, and Dan used all of his remaining courage into showing a convincing poker face, attempting no emotion despite his speech and how his heart was being worn pathetically on his sleeve. Another pathetic metaphor.

“Oh, you’re Dan? Yeah, Phil’s mentioned you once, you used to be flatmates, right?” the guy asked, and Dan nodded blankly, Phil’s gaze on the floor and hands wrapped across his chest.

Dan could only sputter out unrelated phonemes as he attempted to choke out ‘only flatmates?’, which prompted a questionable look from the unknown guy and Phil to shuffle awkwardly.

“I’ll let you two finish up. I’ll see you back upstairs in a minute, love” the guy whispered softly, then pressed a gentle kiss onto Phil’s cheek and disappeared back upstairs, a momentary opaque alternative behind the curtain again before dissipating out of view.

“I’m sorry, Dan” Phil croaked before slowly closing the door once again, leaving Dan alone on the doorstep, head hung low. He didn’t even put up a fight.

The nearby lamppost flickered, and the light blew out completely, leaving the section of Phil’s street in complete and utter darkness. It couldn’t have happened at a more cruelly ironic time, so much so it made Dan smile in the smallest way.

He unclenched his previously balled fist and twirled the folded paper between his forefinger and thumb, staring at Phil’s door aimlessly. The paper was dotted transparent as Dan placed it on the stone of the doorstep, and as he unfolded it the damage was only becoming more severe.

Fresh tear tracks smudged the already next to illegible handwriting further, but Dan straightened out the paper to the best of his ability regardless and placed the doormat on the corner to ensure the paper wouldn’t be blown away in the wind, before turning around and beginning the agonisingly long walk home, holding his own hand watching as his tears dotted the pavement and reflected from the dim lamplight from nearby lampposts.

 

_~~I’m going to love you when the lights come up~~ _

_I’m still going to love you when the lights come up... x_

**Author's Note:**

> You wouldn't think i'm proud of this and spent days on end rewriting it...
> 
> Feedback is life and i'm trash 
> 
> Show this and my other works some love on my blog; cafephan.tumblr.com x


End file.
